


The Running Kind

by guineapiggie



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, RebelCaptain May the Fourth Exchange
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-05-02 03:57:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14536134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineapiggie/pseuds/guineapiggie
Summary: People seemed to misdial Cassian’s number more than was probably normal, ever since he got the new contract when he moved across the border.But then the number of strangers calling him expecting someone else at the other end of the line skyrocketed very suddenly, and it took Cassian an embarrassingly long time to figure out why. It was simple, ridiculously simple, in the end:Somewhere in the country, there was a woman giving out his number when men asked for hers.





	1. Cassian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Callioope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callioope/gifts).



> Obviously, this wasn't supposed to be a two-parter, but real life is apparently a thing so there we go *sigh*
> 
> The prompt for this was "Jyn prefers to end unwanted attention with the fake number she keeps memorized, but it just so happens that fake number belongs to Cassian..."

People seemed to misdial Cassian’s number more than was probably normal, ever since he got the new contract when he moved across the border, and while it was somewhat unnerving, he’d never considered changing the number – in fact, he wouldn’t even have noticed if his friends hadn’t started making jokes about how he had to have a stalker ex-girlfriend if he had so many calls that just broke off the moment he answered the phone. He’d roll his eyes and tell them none of his exes cared enough for that, and forget all about it.

But then the number of strangers calling him expecting someone else at the other end of the line skyrocketed very suddenly, and it took Cassian an embarrassingly long time to figure out why. It was simple, ridiculously simple, in the end: Somewhere in the country, there was a woman giving out his number when men asked for hers.

It was almost like a social study, for a while. A few of them were straight-up assholes who either whined about how, for absolutely _unfathomable_ reasons, “this stupid bitch who wasn’t even that hot” dared to give them a fake number, or assumed that Cassian was her boyfriend or another fling of hers and were mostly affronted she would choose “someone like _that_ ” over what sounded like your run-of-the-mill white dude from the mid-west. One – his personal favourite – heard Cassian answer the phone in Spanish and somehow arrived at the conclusion that she’d given him the number of her dealer _by accident_ , and the amount of self-delusion in that was so tragic Cassian had a hard time even being offended.

He wasn’t _mad_ at the woman who was at the source of this, not really – clearly it was all an unfortunate coincidence and, having spoken to some of the morons she’d been trying to get rid of, he could hardly blame her. What got him curious though was the fact that while yes, a handful of them were a real special brand of douchebag, most of them seemed decent guys. They didn’t argue, they were nothing but polite, and most of them, it seemed, had actually had a good conversation with the woman, but some said they’d had a hunch she hadn’t given them her real number. They apologised for bothering him, wished him a nice day, hung up.

He wasn’t confused about them getting blown off by a woman, necessarily – who knew, maybe she had a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or maybe she just wasn’t looking for anything. What intrigued him more and more, though, was the fact that she hadn’t just _told_ them as much, or at least shown it more clearly. Granted, that guy who’d taken the news of this not being her number by yelling at him how she would _beg_ for a fuck like him until Cassian hung up on him would surely not have knocked it off after that, but the other men probably would have. Despite the fact he knew next to nothing about the woman who was so freely handing out his number in bars, he somehow doubted it was to avoid conflict.

“I do not understand why you don’t just change your number,” Kay said, frowning of him over his tea.

Cassian shrugged. “I’d just make it someone else’s problem.”

His friend scoffed. “How gracious of you to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders for the rest of us, Cassian.”

“Haha,” he muttered, swirling the last of his beer in his bottle. The truth was, of course, that that was total bullshit, and he just really wanted to get to the bottom of this. He wasn’t usually a curious person; he was a good observer so he tended to know more about people than they told him, but that was his _job,_ he didn’t do that on purpose.

But he _was_ curious about this woman, a lot more than he cared to admit. He caught himself thinking about this stranger several times during the day, in the supermarket, out with friends, in his office, a few times in the courtroom, even, to his embarrassment.

A part of him really wanted to find her and ask her about this whole thing herself, a strange wish that he wasn’t exactly proud of – clearly going looking for her would make him exactly the kind of person she was trying to avoid. Besides, what did he have to go on? A few of the men who’d called had asked for a “Liliana” or something, but that was clearly just as much her name as it was her number.

“You should really just change your number, Cassian,” Kay said, interrupting his confused thoughts. “I see no reason why you should have to put up with this.”

Cassian sighed. “I don’t mind, Kay. It’s kind of funny.”

“This is your idea of fun?” His friend sipped at his tea, a drink just as much out of place in the bar as Kay was himself. “I believe it may be time for you to consider therapy, Cassian.”

“Thank you for your concern,” he replied flatly and watched the faint foam form on the beer as he kept the bottle spinning between his hands. “Besides, _your_ idea of fun seems to be hanging out with me, so –“

“I don’t have an array of friends to chose from, Cassian,” Kay said lightly and Cassian sighed. He didn’t know what led Kay to think that he was any different in that regard. He supposed a good part of why he’d got so deep into this little mystery was the simple fact that outside of work, he simply didn’t have a lot of people to talk to.

 

* * *

 

 

The thing dragged on for another two weeks, and he was starting to notice a pattern – or, more precisely, the absence of a pattern. Whatever the hell it was she was getting out of this, it didn’t seem to be a _planned_ thing. She didn’t just go out to a bar and let herself be chat up by a few men every Friday; it happened once or twice a week at the most, often less than that, but then there were often two men calling about the same evening.

Of course, she might just be playing a strange game of catch-and-release, like a cat toying with a mouse, but Cassian didn’t buy into that. Rationally, he knew this was because he’d grown strangely accustomed to this woman’s presence in his life, twisted though it was, and because in his head he’d formed an idea of her and he didn’t want to have to change it into something he didn’t like. In less rational moments, he told himself that wasn’t it, that there was just something he wasn’t getting, something big missing from the pieces of information he had gathered about her.

The thing was, Cassian was stubborn to a fault, always had been. That and nothing else was what got him through law school, got him through the stupid machinery of getting a job and a visa in this country, what got him through a hard and miserably paid job full of setbacks on a daily basis. Sadly, with that stubbornness came the tendency to become deeply absorbed into lost causes and then refuse to let it go, and no matter how many times Kay and his own voice of reason told him there was no goddamn point in what he was doing, he would have to get to the bottom of this, and if it took him years.

 

* * *

 

 

In his defence – well, actually it wasn’t much of a defence, just a pathetic excuse. (This wasn’t his professional legal opinion, just the wisdom of hindsight and a hangover.)

Either way, he’d sat alone in a bar full of couples for an entire night and he’d just lost that goddamn case he’d been working on for months and he’d had far more than was good for him when his phone vibrated, making a loud, unpleasant rattling noise against the wood of the bar that startled him into some semblance of alertness.

He glanced at the screen – caller ID unknown – and for a moment, he wondered if he was really up for another racist jerk at this time of night, he hadn’t been dealt that card in a suspiciously long time and was probably due for one. But then the curiosity and the loneliness that he was growing so achingly familiar with won out, and he picked up the call. He went through the usual spiel of _no, this is not her phone, no, I don’t know her, yes, I’m sure I don’t, and yes, she gave you that number on purpose, she does this regularly, please don’t bother this woman again, thank you_ – he had the phrases all ready at this point, rattling them off like a bored employee at a fast-food restaurant.

He was in luck, in a way, at least one time that day; the guy seemed nice enough, even agreed in a somewhat embarrassed tone (and a voice that was every bit as slurred as Cassian’s) that she hadn’t really seemed to be that into the conversation towards the end, looking back.

Once again he caught himself wondering why someone would give a guy like that a fake number. If he could be this reasonable even in this state, surely he wouldn’t have reacted badly if she’d just told him she wasn’t interested? Of course, Cassian realised he might be nicer to him because he was a guy, but still…

He tapped his fingers against his empty glass for a while, then suddenly heard himself ask: “Why did you talk to her?”

“What?”

Well, too late to row back now, he supposed. “Why her?”

“Why would you wanna know that?” the other guy asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“I don’t know,” he replied softly, his words mingling with the old, slow song clanging from the old speakers in the corner. “Guess I’m curious,” he added in an attempt to make himself sound a little more like a sane person. “Since people keep calling me.”

“I don’t know, man. I kinda liked her? She seemed… interesting. Didn’t look like she was waiting for anyone, either, you know how sometimes you can see that?”

Cassian looked down at his empty glass and the bunched-up emerald-coloured napkin next to it and scoffed. “Yeah.”

“Looked like she could kill me, somehow,” the other added, sounding amused. “If she’d told me to piss off, I wouldn’t’ve argued, you know? So I don’t really get the fake number thing.”

“Can’t really help you with that,” Cassian muttered, shaking his head, and balled up the napkin in his hand.

He’d hung up before he realised that, if he was going to ask stalker questions anyway, he might as well have asked in what city the whole thing had happened. In his head, for some reason, it was somewhere far away from Chicago, somewhere warmer, too. Maybe somewhere near the sea. Not LA, though – a colleague at the law firm had some photos of New Orleans on his wall. Cassian could picture that.

He could ask the next one who called – but no. No, that was _decidedly_ creepy.

This bizarre game of his needed a few rules before he turned into the kind of person his colleagues were hired to defend in court; he was _not_ going to ask for locations or about what she looked like and most of all he was _not_ going to ask for her name, no matter if the ones she gave were made-up or not.

He was not a stalker. He found himself making up scenarios and lives for this person he’d never met whenever his mind drifted off over boring paperwork or before he fell asleep at night or when he stared into his coffee in the morning, but that was not stalking. It wasn’t.

(He was becoming oddly obsessed with a stranger, and he knew that was veering dangerously close to being the same thing, but – oh, for God’s sake, nobody was ever going to know, her least of all, so it didn’t really _harm_ anyone, did it?)

In the end, the fact he’d been a public defender for so long and, despite everything, loved his job, probably said something about him. It probably said saviour complex. And while he doubted this woman needed saving of any kind –

In the end, there just was no reasonable explanation. It was, according to his long-time colleague Solo (whom he barely knew but who somehow ended up at Chirrut and Baze’s diner with him and Kay along with Antilles and Skywalker anyway one evening), “sad and stupid”.

Cassian was very sorry to admit that there really was no better way to put it.

 


	2. Jyn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys, this thing - obviously - is getting way longer than I planned for it to be *sob*

There hadn’t even been any real damage, she thought bitterly, knocking the tip of her shoe against the leg of the old chair in the rhythm of the country song playing from down the hall. Well, there _had_ been damage, obviously, but it wasn’t like you couldn’t _drive_ without a goddamn wing mirror. And if there was anyone who deserved to get into an accident, it was that prick.

She wasn’t supposed to be in trouble for this. She shouldn’t be punished for damaging a car when that arse had made an absolutely wonderful little boy cry. It wasn’t _fair._

And most of all, she had been sitting here too long already. She should be back at the shelter, trying to scrape together some sort of meal. It shouldn’t be Bodhi, who wasn’t even _paid_ for this –

She glanced down at her phone again. Six fifty-three PM. Most people were already driving home from the office at this time, right? But the bustle in the corridor showed no sign of dying down, and the guy at the other side of the door was still on the phone.

Jyn resumed her kicking, now to the tune of a strange cover of _Personal Jesus._

And all this over a stupid flimsy little –

The door opened and the lawyer – a little older than her, but looked the kind that would deny that if she asked – threw her a lazy smile. “Good news and bad news.”

Jyn rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time for this.”

He threw her a pointed look. “No need to be charming, miss, I’ve already pulled strings for you.” He waited for a moment, apparently expecting her to respond to that, then shrugged and went on: “Bad news is, there’s no way I can get to your case in time. Good news is, I found a colleague who’s just closed a few cases so I’ll hand you off to him. Come on.”

Jyn frowned at him. “I’m pretty sure you can’t just hand me over to the next guy because you feel like you’ve got too much on your plate –“

“Who do you think I’ve been calling, lady?” He flashed her a grin. “Anyways, don’t worry. He’ll do fine. I mean, he’s not me, but they can’t all be, eh?”

Jyn found he didn’t wither under her annoyed glare nearly as much as she would like him to, which almost annoyed her more than the twenty minutes she’d wasted waiting for this idiot.

The lawyer sighed and shook his head to himself as he led her further down the corridor. “I see you and Andor will get on just fine. All business and no fun.”

Jyn was just trying to figure out if that was a backhanded insult, compliment or come-on when he stopped abruptly in front one of another narrow door with the paint peeling off, pushed it open without knocking and stuck his head through the doorway.

“I come bearing property damage charges. Uh, two entries in the juvenile record in Britain, five unpaid parking tickets, you got the e-mail?” he rattled off without stopping for breath.

“Yes, thank you, Solo,” came the somewhat pained response, in a far softer voice than she had been expecting, then the other attorney appeared in the doorway.

Also very much not what she had been expecting.

“You need anything else?” Solo asked curtly and the other raised a brow at him.

“Other than my only free day?” he muttered, then shook his head. “Should be all.”

He added something in Spanish under his breath that sounded to her like _you can go back to impressing the princess,_ which made no sense, so she must have got it wrong somehow.

“That’s very funny,” Solo snapped, red creeping up his neck, and something like amusement sparked up in the eyes of the other guy for just a second while Solo rushed off, lazily raising a hand in goodbye as he went. Jyn watched him go, unsure if she was glad to be rid of him or annoyed she had to figure out how to deal with the new guy now.

“Sorry about him,” said guy muttered and held out a hand, stitching a sorry excuse for a smile onto his face. He looked very tired, but he had dark eyes that were alert and sharp. Maybe a little too much so – something inside her recoiled instinctively when she met his gaze. She wasn’t used to being inspected too closely, and certainly not very comfortable with it.

 _Get it together, Erso._ She bit the feeling down and shook his hand.  

There was a small frown around his eyes, like she’d done something to give her discomfort away – _did she flinch? She didn’t, did she?_ – but he didn’t comment, just adjusted the smile.

“Cassian Andor. Have a seat.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, dropped her bag at her feet and sat down on the wobbly old chair he had indicated. When she looked up at him, the sharp eyes had thankfully dropped to the screen of his laptop.

“So, Miss Erso…” Jyn noted the small pause after the ‘miss’, waiting to be corrected, and found that somehow she wasn’t as annoyed by that as she usually was.

“Jyn is fine.”

His eyes flickered up, considering. “Sure.” He returned to the screen, presumably her file, and grimaced. “So. What happened with that car?”

She sighed. “Don’t know, it was dumb. Still smarter than breaking his nose, though.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, a real one this time. She believed _attractive_ was the term.

Which was not a thought she’d ever planned on having about a lawyer.

She shook her head irritably. “I don’t know. That dick – sorry, _person_ –“

The smile flickered up again, and Jyn had to admit this might be a problem down the road.

“He teaches one of the boys I take care of and –“ She sighed and shook her head again. “Finn was taken away from his mother because she didn’t look after him when he was seven, and that so-called teacher had the nerve to suggest she didn’t want him ‘cause he was stupid.”

Something changed about the man opposite when he looked up at her this time; a hard line around his lips and something strangely dark and blunt sitting in his eyes, but then all he asked was, returning to the screen: “The boys at the orphanage you’re running?”

“Yeah,” she replied with a shrug. “I used to just work there, but the owner got really sick and it’s a pretty small place, so we weren’t exactly a lot of employees and I got kinda stuck with running it.”

The expression on his face softened slightly, but didn’t go away. She supposed she had hit a nerve by accident, and a part of her almost felt bad about it.

“Anyway,” she resumed, “I was gonna talk to him, you know, ask what the fuck’s wrong with him – sorry –“

He shook his head, still with that grim pull around his mouth. “Don’t be.”

“I’m not sorry about his bloody car,” she elaborated flatly, even though that was probably not a smart statement in this situation. “I meant –“

He nodded. “I gathered that, yes.”

“He wasn’t even _sorry._ ”

He returned his gaze to the screen and said, almost to himself: “These people never are.” Before she could respond to that, he looked up again, a neutral expression back on his face. “Look, I understand why you did it, and I bet the jury would as well, but –“

“Still guilty.”

He grimaced slightly and nodded. “You should try to settle this, there really isn’t –“

He was interrupted by a loud buzzing noise, and Jyn winced. “One moment.”

_Jyn you heard me when I said Luke can’t…_

_Something tells me they won’t go to…_

_Where are you?? Should this really take…_

_Seriously you said there had to be two…_

_(4) more messages from **Bodhi Rook**_

“Shit,” she muttered.

“Something wrong?”

Jyn grimaced. “No, but uh – I might have left seven troubled minors in the care of a single untrained person.”

“Pretty sure you shouldn’t do that,” he said, then, just when she was considering telling him about how her only two employees had the flu and how her brother was supposed to bring his boyfriend but apparently didn’t (and _oh my god why would she tell a stranger any of that_ ) when he added gently: “But I can tell you from experience, if these kids are up to something they’ll do it whether or not you’re there to supervise them.”

There it was. _From experience._

He was right, too, of course. She also knew that from experience. Still, she should get back – to save her little brother from a meltdown, for starters; but mostly because she was starting to make strange observations about the person opposite her. Like trying to pinpoint the accent (if pressed, she’d say Mexico, but then again she wasn’t sure if she could tell a Mexican accent from, say, a Colombian), or like how she really liked the colour of his eyes, and how she wasn’t sure if she could blame that on how much they reminded her of coffee and how much she could do with a coffee right about now.

He sighed and glanced at the clock over the door. “Right. I’m not sure we could get probation in your case, so either you try to settle this before it goes to court, or you’ll probably be looking at community service –”

She ground her teeth. “Yeah, I don’t really have anyone to cover for me at work.”

“Settling, then.”

“Yeah.” She was beyond unwilling to give so much as a cent to that asshole, but there really wasn’t much choice right now. “I mean, I really don’t have a ton of money to throw at this, hence –“ She did a very embarrassing little gesture towards him and his derelict office that she supposed came off as very insulting but that she didn’t know how to apologise for. “I mean. Then I could afford a…” she stopped herself short of saying _a real lawyer_ , “my own lawyer.”

“Right,” he said, in a tone that was too neutral to tell if she’d insulted him or not.

It was very unlike her to care, but she kind of did. _Get a fucking grip, Erso._

Another glance at the clock, then – “Okay. I’ll try to reach out to his lawyers, see what kind of sum they’re expecting, and we’ll see from there.”

“Sounds good.” ( _Sounds good? Paying an asshole teacher sounds_ good, _does it now, Jyn?)_

He didn’t pick up on that idiotic statement, thankfully, instead picked up a pen and jotted down a number on the back of a business card.

“If you have a question, you can call the office, but… I’ll be out of town for a week, so if it’s really urgent –“

Normally, she would have started to wonder about why the hell her public defender was giving her what was clearly his private number, but something about the sequence somehow rang a bell –

Then her brain skidded to a very sudden halt.

 _Oh. Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh_ no…

“Yeah,” she said slowly, with no idea if he’d asked a question or not, tearing her eyes away from the number only to realise she now had no idea where else to look. “Yeah.”

Okay, this was a _crisis._ A _Crisis._

_Shit._

She got to her feet and shoved her phone into her pocket with too much hurry, as if he could somehow make the link if he looked at it for another second.

Right. Deep breaths. She couldn’t just storm out of here.

“Alright. Thank you, then. For now.” _God, Jyn. Don’t thank him. It’s his job, what are you –_

He was frowning slightly, obviously, because she was acting really weird for no evident reason. “Sure.”

“Okay. Bye.”

_Just go. Just leave._

.

“Where the hell have you been, I was –“

She held up a hand to shut her brother up and cast a quick glance around the room, somewhere in the back of her mind very surprised it was empty except for Bodhi and a stack of dirty plates.

“They went to bed?” she inquired, a little out-of-breath and sounding just as confused as she was feeling, probably.

Her brother grimaced. “Yeah, I had to bribe Paige and Poe to make that happen.”

She nodded absent-mindedly, dropping her bag where she stood. “That’s great. You’re great. I have a problem.”


	3. Jyn

“Well, if you ask me, it could be worse,” Bodhi concluded, setting down his beer.

“Excuse me, how could this be _any_ worse?”

Her brother shrugged and threw her a shrewd little smile. “You think he’s hot.”

“I – what – _that’s not relevant,_ ” she snapped, glaring at him. “He’s a _lawyer._ He’s my _public defender._ There is nothing less important right now than whether or not he’s –“

“Hot, and passed you his private number?”

Jyn groaned. “Yeah, a, because he’s out of town and someone with an office like that sure as hell can’t afford a secretary, and b, it _doesn’t matter_ because it’s the fucking number that I’ve been giving out to strangers for _several years,_ Bodhi. So, back to my point, it could not _possibly_ be any worse.”

Bodhi was still grinning. “Okay, so he’s hot and you actually _like_ him. That’s new.”

“Wha- just shut up, Bodes.”

He shrugged and divided the rest of his beer between the two of them. “You know, I don’t think this is half as bad as it sounds, so stop freaking out –“

“Bodhi –“

“It’s not that bad, Jyn,” he repeated with a smile and nudged her glass her way. “Just promise me one thing.”

She sighed and took a sip. “What?”

“Promise me I get to be there when you clear this whole thing up,” he said, barely making it to the end of the sentence without laughing.

“You’re hilarious.”

“I’m not, but your life sure is, sis,” he sputtered, completely unimpressed with her dark glare. “Seriously though, Jyn,” he added, sobering up slightly. “You have to tell him.”

“What the hell, _no_ , I’m not gonna tell him!” She lowered her voice a little and added: “He’s probably had an endless list of randos call him in the middle of the night for _years._ Why would I tell a complete stranger who’s supposed to help me not get stuck with community service that I’m responsible for that?”

“Because this is a huge, ridiculous coincidence, Jyn. You need to see where this goes, okay, I mean, it could be karma or some shit like that.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re way too romantic for your own good, Bodes? I didn’t raise you like this.”

“If I contained half as much cynicism as you pack in your five foot two and a half, I would _implode_ ,” her brother gave back lightly and got to his feet. “Okay, again, I’m over the effing moon to see you actually interested in someone after you’ve talked to them for longer than five minutes, but find a way to converse with your hot lawyer in some way that doesn’t involve me single-handedly trying to manage this bunch again, okay?”

“Jyn’s got a hot lawyer?”

Jyn jumped to her feet, glaring at the kid in the doorway. “It’s past midnight!”

“Is this about how you kicked in the mirror of Finn’s teacher’s car? That was pretty stupid, by the way.”

“I – why are you even up?”

He shrugged and opened the kitchen cupboard. “Hungry. No offence, Mr Rook,” he added over his shoulder, “but I really miss Baze’s food.”

“Well, sorry, mister,” Bodhi muttered, but Jyn was relieved to hear he didn’t sound offended or insecure, “I’m a pilot and not a four-star chef.”

Jyn sighed. “ _Not_ the cereal, it’s all that’s left for breakfast, Poe. Have an apple.”

He threw her a pointed look and grabbed a biscuit from the top shelf. “So what about your hot lawyer?”

“That – that is _beyond_ none of your business, and you don’t know about my private life.”

The teen shrugged, leaning against the counter and nibbling on his cookie. “I know you’re here all the time.”

That was… that was technically not untrue, and really sad. And she also really didn’t want to listen to this from a fifteen-year-old.

“Yeah, you know…” Her brother grinned at her and patted her shoulder, “I’m gonna leave you two to that.”

“Sure, abandon me,” she replied with a sigh and ran a hand over her face. “Bye, Bodes.”

“Bye, Jyn,” Bodhi muttered, pressed a kiss to her cheek and was out of the door before she could add so much as a _thank you for helping out,_ or a more accurate _you’re a treasure and I don’t deserve you._

“So,” Poe said with a smirk, fishing another biscuit out of the box, “how hot are we talking?”

Jyn groaned. “For fuck’s sake, go to bed, Poe.”

The smirk widened and he put the (presumably empty) box down and nodded. “ _That_ hot, huh?”

“Nuh-uh, we are not having this conversation,” she muttered, got to her feet and switched off the lights. “You’re pissing off to bed because it’s a quarter to one, Dameron. And so am I, ‘cause I’m dead on my feet.”

The boy gave an overdramatic little sigh, then his face turned a little more serious. “You’re not, like, in _trouble_ though, right? Because of the car? ‘cause you know, that guy really said –”

Jyn sighed and nudged him out of the dark kitchen. “It’ll be fine, Poe. Now get the hell to bed, and don’t wake the others.”

“Yes ma’am,” he muttered, thumping up the stairs.

“Breakfast at six, and I’m not hauling your ass out of bed again, clear?”

“Sure, like you’d let me miss school,” he replied with a shrug and Jyn rolled her eyes, leaning against the rail as she watched him trot back to his room.

Maybe, hopefully, a few hours of sleep would make this whole thing look slightly less disastrous. Even though she didn’t really have high hopes for that.

.

Three days later, Chirrut was finally back, but Baze was still out of the equation, meaning still no real food, meaning even crankier teens.

It didn’t really improve Jyn’s mood, either, to tell the truth – embarrassed though she was to admit it, she had become quite dependant on the cranky Chinese’s amazing cooking, a fact that she hadn’t really been aware of until Baze had caught the flu.

They’d been living on scrambled eggs and sandwiches for entirely too long now, either way, and this wasn’t just her opinion – Poe and Rey had told her as much, unprompted, on several occasions.

It wasn’t that she’d forgotten about the actual _lawsuit,_ but she was mostly swamped with worrying about the imminent bills and the goddamn pipe in the downstairs bathroom that had managed to not only flood the entire room, but also ruin the flooring of the hallway. She didn’t even want to imagine what fixing that was going to cost by the end of the month.

That, and whenever her thoughts did return to the whole stupid incident, they then immediately jumped to how she had somehow managed to give out her _fucking court-appointed public defender’s private phone number_ in bars, for actual years. _Years!_

And no matter how often Bodhi, and Poe, insisted, she wasn’t mortified because said lawyer managed to be unfairly attractive even though that should be impossible for someone who had also attended law school – it wasn’t the reason. (It admittedly made it a little bit worse, though.)

“We’re not having eggs again, right, Jyn?”

She glanced up at Paige and grimaced. “You have a better idea?”

“We could just order a pizza.”

She scoffed and returned her eyes to her very narrowly filled expenses tracker. “Yeah, sure. Are you gonna pay for it?”

Paige sighed and flopped down on the bench opposite her. “Rose got an A- in history.”

Jyn smiled a little, both at the news and the pride in her voice. “That’s great.”

“Yeah, just in case she tells you she got an A, ‘cause that’s what she’s told Poe and Finn five times today,” Paige said, course-correcting. “It was an A-.”

“Sure,” Jyn replied with a grin. “Can you make sure they do their homework?”

“Yeah, of course.”

She raised a brow at her. “Can you make sure you also do yours?”

Paige rolled her eyes and got to her feet with a sigh. “Haha. I think you got a text.”

Jyn glanced at her phone, left beside her but in silent mode for days (which was a terrible habit that got her into trouble all the time, but then whenever she actually turned the sound back, it then went off in the totally wrong moment) and once again flinched internally at the number on the screen.

**(2) missed calls**

_Goddamn it._ Goddamn it, now she had to _call_ him. She hated calling people, always had, and she’d somehow managed to convince herself she would never really have to see or talk to him again.

With a small groan, she got to her feet, gave Chirrut a quick heads-up and retreated into the room they called an office but that was really more of a file room with a tiny old couch crammed into the corner.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this, uh… this is Jyn Erso.” It suddenly hit her that this is exactly what everyone she’s given his number would sound like and, _oh God,_ this was probably why he didn’t answer the phone with his name in the first place –

“You, uh, you called me,” she added lamely, grimacing.

“Uh, yes. Yes, I did. Good afternoon.”

He sounded so stiff. Why would he, though; he was a lawyer, wasn’t he? Didn’t that mean he called people all the time? Why would he be uncomfortable?

Maybe he _knew_. Oh God. Did he know? _Could_ he?

“I, um, I finally reached his lawyer, but –“

“Let me guess, he doesn’t want to settle.”

“Well, he wasn’t _against_ it,” he replied slowly.

“But?”

“He wasn’t exactly _reasonable._ And after a few of the comments he made I realised… Look, the boy he made these comments about, Finn, right? Does he give him bad grades?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think they’re warranted?”

Jyn frowned. “No, but –“

“Is he… do you think he, uh – I couldn’t help but feel this is probably a racist issue?”

Jyn almost laughed. “I didn’t know that was up for discussion, but yeah. Yeah, obviously.”

“Can I – Could I talk to Finn?”

She hesitated, and somehow, he picked up on that after a few seconds.

“The thing is, they’re not just out for money, they want to inconvenience you as much as possible. But if we can make this look like a racist thing, you could threaten them with a lawsuit in return, and they’d probably be ready to settle for a much lower sum of money.”

She frowned a little. “So you think that’s the best way of doing it?”

“He’s a teacher who’s paying his lawyer by the hour. He doesn’t _really_ want this to go to court, and least of all with him on the defence. If we can make a decent case for that, I think you should do it, yes, because for now he proposed a sum that I don’t think you’ll be able to accept.”

“How much?”

“Two thousand,” he replied sourly. “And I’m sorry, but that’s fucking ridiculous. For a car like that, considering the age and the brand, I don’t care _where_ he’s getting it repaired, it can’t have been more than five hundred bucks. We’re probably looking at two hundred or so, actually.”

She was just about to lose her (crumbling) composure when she suddenly realised something else. Something much bigger than the information that, unsurprisingly, that teacher was still an asshole –

“I’m not your only case, am I?”

“Uh, no, you’re… you’re not, why?” he replied in a somewhat confused tone.

“You… you looked all that up,” she answered stupidly, before she could stop herself.

“Uh, yes, that’s – that’s my job, Miss Erso.” Something in his voice sounded… if she didn’t know better, she would have gone with _defensive._

Surely, that was not the case, but it sounded like it, and that was confusing. Because from what she had seen from him, he didn’t seem the type of person that wasn’t able to conceal his feelings.

“I uh, I know that,” she replied hastily, trying to pull herself out of that line of thought. That wasn’t going anywhere and also, it wasn’t a thought she should or wanted to have about a lawyer. No.

“I just… thank you.”

He inhaled, too close to the phone so she heard it. “So, would you consider letting me speak to Finn?”

Again, she hesitated.

“It won’t take long. I’ll hear what he can tell me and then we’ll see if it’s worth trying or not, you can decide if you want to go through with it.”

Jyn sighed. She didn’t like the idea of dragging Finn into this in any way, shape or form – but she also really didn’t have two thousand dollars to spare.

She didn’t even really have two hundred, for that matter.

“Okay. Okay. He has school until about five, so –”

“For how much longer will he be up? Tonight?”

She glanced at the clock, feeling herself tense up a little. “The younger ones go to bed at ten. So about five hours?”

“So, would it be possible if I came by in, um, two hours maybe?”

“I don’t see why not,” she replied slowly, realising too late how weird that had to sound. She grimaced.

“Alright. Thank you. Can you give me the address?”


	4. Cassian

The building looked pretty much like he thought it would – old and crumbling around the edges, with some half-hearted and apparently quickly abandoned attempts to patch up the façade or paint the fence around the property or mow the lawn.

He also suspected whoever had tried their hand at the façade had not been his client, because it was an obnoxiously sunny yellow that had been painstakingly applied, not a drop on the window frames or the sill – even though whoever it had been had given up a third of the way through.

He shook his head in a half-hearted attempt to get rid of the memories tugging at the fringes of his mind, trying to shake the familiarity of the whole place. But no, it’d been so much warmer, and he’d been so much smaller, not even tall enough to look over the fence – that had been wire mesh, too, not wood – and the trees had been all different, of course.

Cassian sighed, loosened the worn scarf he’d tucked slightly too tightly around his neck against the wind, and made his way to the front door, having to try a little too hard for a convincing friendly expression.

It wasn’t _just_ the building, obviously, he thought grimly and pushed his hands down his pockets. _Solo said to tell you he was sorry for saddling you with that property damage thing,_ Antilles had told him cheerfully over coffee a few days earlier. _I told him since it’s made you pine after a real existing person for a change, he probably did you a favour._

Cassian wasn’t used to being read so easily, not since he was six and too small for his age and staring at a door not unlike this one, and it felt every bit as bad as he remembered.

Hopefully, it wasn’t as easy for her –

He reached for the doorbell, a little too slowly.

 _You’re not picking up a date for prom, goddamn it, this is a work event, Andor,_ he told himself irritably, _there’s no need to be this stupidly nervous._

Then again, he hadn’t spent a lot of time talking to children lately, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever been good at it to begin with; so perhaps he _should_ be nervous.

That, and he had a sneaking suspicion that, and he didn’t need Kay to tell him that, was statistically as good as impossible, and yet… and yet there hadn’t been a single call for the girl with his number all week. Which of course in and of itself was not unusual, he’d gone a week or even two without any calls before – but then there was also her reaction to his number. There was no reason to react that startled to a string of numbers unless you had seen it before, was there?

Of course, it could have also been just the fact that he’d had to add it to the business card, making it obvious it was his private number. Only after she’d left – _fled,_ almost – he’d realised how much like a come-on that must’ve seemed. He hadn’t meant it that way at all; another client had knocked over a glass of water and ruined his work phone a few weeks ago and he was still waiting to get a new one, and he’d had a lot of court appointments after she’d been to his office, so she wouldn’t have caught him on the landline.

Still, she might have just mistaken it for him making a pass on her. Which would have been an objectively horrible thing to do, because she was dependent on him to get her out of this, and wouldn’t know if and how it was possible to be issued someone else and –

God, wrong line of thought. Now he just felt like a total asshole, and there were steps approaching the door, so no time to –

“You must be the attorney. Good evening.” A middle-aged man with a sage little smile in a stunningly ugly knitted sweater stood in the doorway. Something was wrong with his eyes, somehow, they were oddly out of focus, and looking at a point just slightly over Cassian’s head. “Come in.”

“Thank you,” he muttered and stepped into the hall – dimly lit, the lamp over their head wasn’t working. There was a big worn stairway, and the segment of room at the far end was missing its flooring. Next to the stairs, there was a pile of new floorboards, still wrapped in plastic. Somewhere in the house, he could hear music playing.

The man closed the front door behind them and motioned for Cassian’s coat. “You’re not from here, either,” he said in surprisingly good Spanish, carefully putting the coat up on a very overcrowded coat rack.

“No,” Cassian replied slowly, slightly taken aback. “Mexico.”

He smiles to himself and leads the way, running a hand along the wall to guide himself. “I see. Poe will like you,” he replied, whatever that meant, back to English.

“You work here?” Cassian inquired, and the other man nodded, pushing through a door at the foot of the stairs.

“Yes. Jyn inherited my husband and me with the rest of this place. We have been here longer than any of the kids.”

They entered a big room with a kitchen at the far end, separated from a dining area by a half-wall. Cassian counted five kids at the big table near the door, two teenagers and three who looked to be maybe ten or eleven, all of them suspiciously quiet and dutifully bent over their homework – he was sure they’d been listening since he’d come through the door, as well as they could over the sound of the radio, anyway.

He guessed Finn was the younger of the two boys, sitting in the far corner – supposing the other was Poe that the blind man had just mentioned, then?

“This is Jyn’s attorney, he’s here to have a word with Finn. You’re allowed to move, though,” the other man said into the awkward silence with a faint grin, and a few eyes flickered up to him – except for the boy in question and the little Asian girl sitting next to him.

“Hello,” Cassian said, stupidly, and a faint grin played around the lips of the oldest boy, like he’d said something funny.

The oldest two greeted him, and so did the girl next to Finn (after Cassian supposed the older girl, there was a fairly close resemblance so maybe her sister, had kicked her underneath the table).

The blind man chuckled. “We’re trying to persuade them be polite, but I see we’ll have to raise the bribe. Have a seat, Mr Andor.” He turned to the kids. “Jyn should be –“

“’m here,” came her sour voice from the door, making Cassian flinch a little, to his embarrassment.

“Sorry, it’s just the fucking tap is still leaking and,” she irritably pushed her fringe out of her eyes, “you’re kind of early.”

“Yes, I – sorry,” he gave back lamely.

There was water splashed on her pale green cargo trousers and her shirt, and strands of hair had escaped the hair tie in the nape of her neck, clinging to slightly sweaty skin. She looked a little irritated, and beautiful – which, _damn it, Andor,_ was absolutely not a thought he should be having. _No_. He’d been over this. Unprofessional, and unfair to her; she was stuck with him.

Still though, she _did_ – the colour of the shirt and the slight flush set off her pale skin and –

_Good lord, Cassian, cut it out._

“No, it’s –“ she grimaced and shook her head, fringe falling right back into place, “Sorry, that’s… that’s not your fault. Um…” She wiped her hands on her trousers and turned to the man who was still watching them with a sage little grin – Cassian was pretty sure by now that he was at least almost blind, yet _watching_ seemed the only appropriate description somehow.

“Can you guys maybe start dinner while we –“

“Sure,” the teenage girl replied in his stead, getting to her feet.

“We’ll help, don’t worry. No disturbances,” the older boy added and threw Jyn a shrewd little smile, suggestive almost. She rolled her eyes.

“For fuck’s sake, Poe,” she muttered under her breath, throwing Cassian an apologetic little grimace as if any of that meant something to him. “Thank you,” she sighed, then added with a strained smile towards the boy in the corner: “C’mon, Finn. You’re relieved of kitchen duty.”

“Yay,” he gave back sarcastically, climbing off the bench, and Cassian felt a small smile tug at his lips.

“Don’t worry, it won’t take long,” he said, and the boy’s dark eyes flickered up to him, slightly relieved.

“We can go to my office,” she said in a sheepish kind of voice, leading the way, “but fair warning, it’s a mess.”

He shrugged. “You’ve seen mine.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m warning you,” she gave back drily, side-stepping the heap of new floorboards, and pushes open a door with some effort.

Effort, it turned out, because there were boxes precariously stacked so close to the door it audibly scraped past them as she pushed her shoulder into the old wood. There was a small window on the wall opposite, and a desk underneath that seemed to take up at least half the room, papers scattered all over it. Next to it, a tall shelf had somehow been crammed into the small space between the wall, the desktop and a very old couch in the corner that, too, was cluttered with binders and loose documents.

“I take it back,” he said softly and Jyn scoffed, ushering Finn inside.

“She warned you,” Finn said with a shaky little grin, causing a little smile to tug at Jyn’s lips.

“Okay, so… do you want to sit, or…”

Cassian cast a quick glance around the room and bit back a sigh. He doubted that would be feasible within the next fifteen minutes.

“Nah, it’s alright,” he muttered, but then realised he was towering over the boy, which probably didn’t work towards making him less threatening to Finn, so he carefully cleared the desk chair of five more binders and sat down.

Finn still didn’t look quite at ease, awkwardly sitting down on the armrest of the cluttered couch.

Jyn leaned against the wall next to him, eyeing Cassian somewhat defensively.

“Okay, Finn, right?” Cassian asked softly, a stupid point to start because he already knew the boy’s name, but whatever. Finn nodded.

“I’m Cassian. I’m Jyn’s –“

“Court-appointed attorney, yeah, I know,” the boy said drily, and Cassian felt himself smile faintly. The kid was starting to remind him of someone.

“Good, okay. Do you think there’s anything you can tell us about Mr. Peters?”

“He’s my English teacher. He’s like fifty. He’s an ass.”

Jyn cleared her throat, glaring at the boy who threw her an innocent smile.

“What? It’s another word for donkey, Jyn,” he said calmly.

“Really?” Cassian gave back, distracted, before Jyn could respond, and Finn turned back to him.

“Yeah. Didn’t learn that from Mr Peters, though.”

Oh yes, he _really_ reminded Cassian of another boy in another orphanage, a shockingly long time ago.

“Look, kid, you’re hilarious, but this is for a court case, okay?” Jyn said with a sigh. “So less expletives-slash-animals, more facts, please.”

“Can you remember Mr Peters being rude to students, maybe?” Cassian asked and the boy grimaced.

“He calls us idiots and morons a lot.”

“All the students?”

“Not really. Mostly like Joe and Felix and Paco… Veró and Jacky… and Leo and me.”

Cassian sighed. “Right. And do you guys have trouble in school generally? Bad grades?”

“With that guy we have pretty bad grades, yeah.”

“And with the other teachers?”

“It’s fine. Like, Joe kind of sucks in maths, but we’re not _stupid_ ,” Finn said testily and Cassian grimaced.

“I don’t think you are, Finn. So you think he just doesn’t like you and these other kids?”

“Pretty sure. He keeps saying that, like, teaching us about those books is useless, stuff like _I get that this is hard for you to understand, but it’s on the curriculum for you too…_ you know, that kind of thing.”

Cassian nodded, a slightly bitter taste in his mouth. “Why d’you think he thinks you won’t understand?”

Finn threw him an indignant look. “’cause he thinks we’re stupid ‘cause we’re not white, man. I really have to explain that to you?”

“No, but I needed you to say it,” Cassian said with a shrug and Finn scoffed. “Did he ever call any of you something… offensive? Like about how you look, racial slurs or…?”

Finn thought on that for a while, then offered tentatively: “Um… he once said something like _you Japs do that, right_ about something like… eating dogs? I think? And Leo’s family is from Singapore, so…” He pauses, then adds: “And once Madison and Jackie handed in the same essay and Jackie swore Madison copied it off of her, but he gave Jackie detention even though there was literally no proof.”

Cassian nodded. “Okay. And, um… he said something about your parents, too?”

The boy looked angry now, and helpless somehow. “He just… he just said…” He took a breath and resumed, just a touch too fast: “He said something like no surprise my mum didn’t feel like hanging around a kid as dumb as me.”

He tried to play it as though he barely even remembered what the teacher said, but Cassian had a pretty strong feeling that was a verbatim quote.

“Do you remember what the situation was when he said that?” he inquired softly.

“He asked about the poem at the beginning of Gatsby.” He caught Cassian frowning and added, brow raised: “The Great Gatsby? The book?”

“Right. What about the poem?”

Finn looked somewhat petulant now. “That poem about the some guy bouncing in a hat? He asked who I thought wrote it. I said the name it said underneath, because, like… well, that’s the name of the poet, right?”

Cassian frowns. “And he called you dumb for giving that answer?”

Jyn sighed. “Fitzgerald wrote it himself, but he signed with a weird pseudonym. It ties into the themes of the – there’s no way you could expect a kid to know that.”

Cassian sighed. “Okay. Alright. Thank you, Finn. If you remember anything else, can you tell Jyn about it?”

“’kay. So can I go?”

“Sure,” he said and Jyn clapped the boy on the shoulder as he left the room.

“Thanks, Finn.”

The door fell shut behind him and Jyn sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, leaning back against the wall. A few more strands of brown hair had come lose from her hair tie, a stark contrast against the pale skin of her neck.

She looked angry, and exhausted – in short, looked how he felt.

“Right,” she muttered, pushing off the wall. “What d’you think?”

Cassian sighed and got to his feet, the chair creaking under his weight. “If this plays out in an actual court, this would all be dismissed.”

“Right.”

“But it _could_ be enough to prevent it ever getting there.” Cassian sighed. “I don’t know. It’d be a gamble, but… his attorney is banking on me not wanting to put any work in your case. Well, and on me being unable to understand English properly,” Cassian added sardonically and she bit her lip, which was slightly unfortunate because _damn,_ now he was staring at her again –

_Stop, Cassian._

“So… you’re saying they wouldn’t see it coming, but if they call our bluff, we’re screwed?”

He couldn’t help a smile. A client willing to keep up was… refreshing.

And a pretty client at that.

_Stop it, Cassian._

“Pretty much.”

Jyn scoffed, burying her hands in her back pockets. “Yeah, great. Story of my life.”

She sounded bitter, and there was a pull around her mouth to go with her tone. Just from her file, he’d had enough to wonder about her past – _troubled_ seemed too small a word – but despite how short and delicate she would have seemed to him had he crossed her on the street, he was starting to find that she looked it, too.

“Well, it’s, um…” His attempts to keep himself from staring at her lips only led to his gaze straying to the crystal around her neck, then quickly back up to her green eyes because _fuck, that’s the definition of inappropriate –_ and those were problematic, too. Too deep, too sharp, confusing. He lost track of his sentence.

He cleared his throat. “Um. Think on it. We can… _you_ can… his offer of two thousand is on the table for another week.”

“A whole week, huh? I’m a lucky girl,” she said, still in that bitter voice, but then she sighed, eyes flickering up to meet his, and the steely glint in them softened slightly. “Sorry, I… I appreciate it. This.”

There was a strange little pause that he was about eighty percent sure was only happening in his head, her eyes still very sharp and very green and very distracting, before she went on:

“Your help. I know it’s… more than you’re expected to do.”

He felt compelled to lie again, tell her this was his job, but held his tongue this time. He was going out of his way and they both knew it, and somehow, he was okay with that.

Somehow he felt like suddenly, there was a status quo to maintain, a balance of knowledge to consider. She was fairly certain she knew he was doing more for her than he had to, and seemed to have a hunch of why he did – and he had very improbable hunch about why she’d reacted to his number and now his presence the way she did.

(Unless, of course, she still just thought he was hitting on her – which, and there was no denying that, he was having a hard time keeping himself from doing but which was also very much not the reason he was there. He’d been in Finn’s shoes so often, and he’d had nobody like Jyn. He honestly wanted to help her, because these kids deserved someone looking out for them like she did.)

But still, he’d handed her leverage and he felt the nonsensical urge to get even, and besides, he just _had_ to know –

“Can I ask you a strange question?”

Her brows darted up. “Strange how?”

He sighed. “You, um… the last time we met, I had the impression you recognised my number.”

She blinked away the look of shock in a fraction of a second, but he saw it.

“My memory for numbers is pretty shitty, actually.”

He smiled faintly, nodding to himself. “Right. Is that why you’ve been using the same fake number for three months?”

Again, there’s a small pause that he isn’t quite sure is actually real, then, instead of lying, she sighs. “Laziness. I’d just… got used to it. That and most people can hear the difference of whether you make the number up or not.” Her eyes inspected the tips of her battered boots. “I guess I should apologise.”

“What I don’t get… half of them seemed… decent guys. If you’d told them to piss off, I’m sure –“

“It wasn’t…” She grimaced, a strange humourless smile now tugging at her lips. “It’s not like that. The ones I want to piss off… I tell them. But the others it’s more like… I don’t know. I actually want to give them my number, you know, but then I just…” She scoffed, shrugged. “It never ends well, so most of the time I figure I’m better off just not finding out.”

“Finding out what?”

“All the reasons why those nice guys are actually assholes?” She saw the way he looked at her, probably, because she added in a tetchy voice: “I’ve been told I should try to get a better picture of people around me. This way, they stay nice guys who bought me a beer and liked the way my ass looked in my jeans and told me I have pretty eyes, and all the skeletons stay in their respective closets.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s progress on your worldview,” he muttered. So in a weird way, all this time the person at the other end of the line had been just as lonely and bitter has he had. His life tended to be funny like that.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” she said quietly, defiance settling into her voice. “You could’ve just changed your number, you know.”

He smiled to himself, mostly about how pathetic the real response to that was. “Would you believe I enjoyed it?”

“What?”

He shrugged, eyes fixed on hers. He could do defiant, too. “It was funny, sometimes. And it… I felt useful.”

“ _Useful?_ By being the guy nobody was trying to reach?”

“Not… not useful,” he corrected, shaking his head. “Responsible. I didn’t think the next guy would make sure these guys didn’t go looking for you.”

Her eyes finally flickered up at him. “What?”

“I figured some of these guys might’ve been pissed that you gave them a fake number, so…”

“Why did you think they would even listen to you?”

He scoffed. “I’m a lawyer, Jyn. I talk people out of things for a living.”

She was still glaring at him. “I didn’t need your help. What’d you imagine? A little blond damsel in distress that needed some rando to come save her from her poor life choices?”

He ignored her tone and shrugged. “Actually, I think I got pretty close overall. But I imagined you’d live by the sea for some reason. Don’t know why.”

“You could’ve just asked those guys where they met me, you know.” Her voice was still flat, but slightly less hostile. “I thought in your profession you needed to be smart.”

“I didn’t want to ask. That would have felt like stalking.”

That seemed to give her pause. For a while, she eyed him with a strange look on her face, then she suddenly smiled a little. “By the sea, huh?”

“Yeah. No idea.”

“I grew up in Brighton, on the Channel. Close enough?”

He shrugged, feeling a smile tug at his lips, too. “I’ll let it count.”

The smile looked different than he’d have expected, somehow, warmer maybe. Softer. For the first time, he believed the age on her criminal record – the one that he could’ve sworn was forged, not that he’d put it past her.

Someone should make it their job to make her smile like that more often –

 _But not_ you _, Andor, for fuck’s sake, get it together._

He cleared his throat. “I, uh… I should go, I’m sure you have stuff to do.”

“Yeah. Leaking tap. Hungry teenagers. Homework and all.” He could have been wrong, but he could have sworn there was a touch too much colour in her cheeks.

He decided to file that observation under _interesting._

“When you’ve decided what you want to do, let me know,” he said, shrugging into his jacket, “I’ll, um… I’ll see if I can get something from Finn’s classmates, maybe.”

“Something tells me you don’t have time to do that,” she gave back tersely, avoiding his eyes. “I mean, I guess I know you have a saviour complex or something, but –“

“I know a PI that owes me a favour,” he said mildly, cutting her off. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

“Okay.” Her teeth scraped over her lip unhelpfully, and the cold air wafting in through the door she was holding open for him didn’t suffice to clear his head. “Thank you, Mr Andor.”

He grimaced. “Cassian.” When she opened her mouth, presumably to argue, he shook his head and added quietly: “Come on. I’ve been taking your calls for months.”

She scoffed and leaned her head against the door, eyes closed. “Oh God.”

Cassian felt himself smile, and allowed it. “Goodnight.”

“Yeah. See you.”

 

* * *

 

(So maybe she stood in the open door a moment too long. She was tired, that was all, it’d been a long day, and the cold wind was soothing on her still-burning cheeks.)

“You two were in there a long time.”

She let the door fall shut and turned to glare at Poe. He was leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, the giggling Tico sisters right behind him.

“I wish you’d use that imagination for your English assignments, Poe,” she replied with a fake sugary smile, and marched past them. “You leave me anything for dinner?”


End file.
